It's been a lovely Christmas holiday; Mom here for a week, time off from work. Today is the last day of the year. I'm doing my annual out-with-old-in-with-the-new cleaning/reorganizing ritual and Duncan is cooking up a storm in the kitchen. I'm not sure what is to come, but I saw a can of collards so I think I was successful in talking him out of cooking fresh ones. Here are a few pictures:
A couple of weeks before Christmas, Duncan played Santa Claus for a Charleston Animal Society fundraiser. He overcame his aversion to the camera because he loves cats and dogs AND dressing up like Santa!
This is that moment when we've done everything we're going to do to "get ready" and we are just enjoying Christmas at home. Notice the framed envelope over the fireplace addressed to my Grandfather., We'll come back to that in a minute.
We did our annual Christmas Day Walk on the Beach. It was cold enough to bundle up, but not freezing. We hit it at a good low tide, so it was great for a walk.
Christmas Dinner was a picnic after our walk at the Folly Beach City Park. Ham biscuits, deviled eggs, fruit salad and tea. Yum!
Here we are among the "public art."
Too bad he doesn't have on his red suit. . .
Mom keeps passing along family treasures. This is a pearl handled quill pen that belonged to my Grandmother Bowles. Mom says she feels sure it was a special birthday or Christmas gift and is the one she used to write all the letters to Granddaddy that we have saved. (Go back to the large framed envelope over the fireplace, THAT envelope was addressed with THIS pen.)
More treasures from the Bowles family: Mom's note says these two pieces of silver were a wedding gift to Grandmother and Granddaddy in 1913 -- and since they eloped, there probably weren't many wedding gifts -- so, very special.
And this final family treasure: Recently I told Mom I didn't have many pictures of Daddy, so she made special albums for me and each of the grandchildren. This is Daddy and me at Christmas in 1996.
It's a pretty big deal for us to put up a Christmas tree. Most years, especially if we're traveling, we don't. (Not having children grants you certain freedoms). But Mom is spending a week with us this year, so we're pulling out more stops.
Early in the month we went kicked off our Christmas season by going to see the Charleston Parade of Boats.
It's blurry, but squint your eyes and use your imagination and maybe you can tell this boat celebrated Christmas At the Beach. There's a flamingo and a jumping dolphin. Sailboats paraded at their own pace behind.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
December 4th and my summer flowers are still blooming.
When Mom visited in October we bought this Debutante camellia. It blooms now and the Lady Claire blooms in Feb.March.
We've had one night when it threatened to go below freezing, but the following day it went up to over 70 again. I recently said I wished it would get colder so it would feel more like the holidays and someone told me to be careful what I wished for. True, true. So, I'm enjoying this e-x-t-e-n-d-e-d fall.
After years of mom telling me the point of living is not just to "be happy" I find myself, for the first time, -- happy. Content -- OK with it all. And thankful. So it CAN be happy people who are thankful, but I get what they're saying. Thank you Mom.
This year I find myself particularly thankful for:
The courage to change jobs -- again. Knock wood, it seems to be going well.
Something has shifted in me and I've made peace with staying in Charleston longer. Duncan got a boat and I bought a bathing suit somewhere not Costco. Whoo-hoo, at this time of our lives we live at the coast and we're going to make the most of it.
Doors on closets
Teachers
My high-tech achievement of the year -- transitioned to a Mac and a phone that is smarter than me.
My low-tech achievement of the year -- I've learned to knit and am almost done with a "twirly" scarf - a very forgiving 1st project.
Knowing more people who like to play Bananagram
It has been a year relatively free of committee work. That's about to change so I'll take a moment to appreciate it.
Those big things that I've mentioned in years past remain constant -- very thankful for Mom, Duncan, Duncan's job, health insurance, many good and dear friends. Very thankful, these are truly big - really the only things that matter.
We decided if we're going to live on the water, we ought to be able to explore our creek a bit more -- so we finally bit the bullet and got Duncan the Port-a-Bote he's been looking at for two years. This is 12.5 feet long and folds up to transport (so we don't need a trailer) and it has its own dolly so we can just wheel it out of the garage and into the water. Once it's in the water, we take the wheels off and go.
About the time we got it, the temperature went up into the 100s and it just wasn't that enticing to "go boating." Duncan took it out a couple of times, but today was the first time we both went. We caught the rising tide and tooled around our little Jason Creek and out to the Stono River.
Duncan launched right behind our condo. I took this picture from our deck.
Then he picked me up at the end of the boardwalk. The tide was high and it was easy to step in from the platform.
That's our wake!
A quick shout-out to our good friend, Marcus Brown, who has just arrived in Taiwan for a 5-month teaching assignment. Marcus, when you get back, you're going to love this! (For regular readers, this is Fiona's dad -- and Fiona and her Mom are staying here while Marcus is away on this job. So, Duncan and I are even more vigilant as neighborhood grandparents, now.)
We went out of the creek and turned right and rode by Waterway South condos and then turned right again and went down behind the houses in Battery Hague we have walked by so many times.
We've watched this neighborhood being built -- even in this wretched economy. A lot of these lots have docks long before they have houses.
Next, we retraced our steps back out into the Stono and went the other way, past Capri Isle and then turned left into the cut that becomes the Wappoo Cut. This area had a lot of traffic and we were the smallest boat out there, so we found ourselves fighting the wakes from the big boys. We didn't go far enough to even get in sight of the draw bridge on Folly Road. But that's where we were heading.
There were some nice houses along the shoreline.
We weren't quite sure what was going on here. Some kind of homemade seawall effort?
This is a pretty lot with a large older home set way back in the trees. This was coming back out of the Cut going back into the river.
On the way home we got a good look at this guy. He was intent on dinner and paid us no mind.
Back in Jason Creek, home is just ahead. (I really like this picture.)
Home again -- still had gas and still had plenty of tide.
Hurricane Irene turned out to be a non-event for us, but as she was forming earlier in the week, I was preparing to evacuate to Cary. No damage done to me and mine but it could have been messy for a lot of us. The NC coast fared far worse than we did here.
Taken earlier in the month, this is the view out our deck on a normal day.
This was about 2 PM Friday as Irene was passing through. I know, not that much difference. It was basically a 30-minute rain.
As Irene left us, she went with some lovely winds and skies. Dusk was a pretty time Friday night. It seemed like the trees were being "fluffed" -- the limbs and leaves were lifted and dropped -- shaking the dust out. I took this picture from our deck about 8PM. It was a high tide, but not the highest we've seen by a long shot. Can you see the rainbow?
On Tuesday, as we were waiting to see what Irene was going to do, there was an earthquake in Virginia felt by Mom in Cary, and by some here in Charleston. Not me. Still, we all survived a hurricane and an earthquake in one week. Whew, enough weather news for the year!
Our very relaxing mountain-top vacation was well-timed. In the last week of July, we spent five nights sleeping under blankets with the windows open. Now, home again, it is sweaty, sizzling, sweltering, stifling hot! What are we going to do to get through August?
We had a condo at the lovely Chetola Resort at Blowing Rock. None of us had been in that part of the mountains in more than 10 years! Everything in Watagua County looks pretty upscale and prosperous compared to what we all remember. Especially in Blowing Rock, flowers were nearly as lush and pretty as they were in Victoria and Vancouver last year.
Driving 421 and 321 out of Winston-Salem, we took the Parkway into Blowing Rock and the Blue Ridge was living up to its name.
In the 80s, Duncan worked at Blue Ridge Parkway National Park and spent quite a bit of his time around the Moses Cone Memorial Park. As a park ranger, Duncan used to take visitors on a hike from the house up to the grave site of Moses & Bertha Cone and tell them ghost stories. He very much wanted us to walk up there with him, but we never made it. We spent too much time in the wonderful Crafts Showroom that fills the lower floor of Flattop Manor now.
From our deck at Chetola we could see this vast house way in the distance filling the entire mountainside. At first we were unaware it was the Cone House and we grumbled about the poor taste of whoever ruined the view with such a monstrosity. But when looking at a picture in a brochure, we realized that this mostrosity had not been built by "new money" but was Flattop Manor and had been on the mountaintop for quite awhile
We went shopping in Blowing rock, everyone bought shoes at the Tanger Outlet, and we went over to Boone and took a look at the campus of Appalachian before stopping at the Daniel Boone Inn for a blow-out meal. We had great kitchen facilities in our condo and mostly fixed our own meals and ate outside on the patio. That felt like such a luxury!
I had never been to Grandfather Mountain so we did another drive down the Parkway to see that. Very pretty and now I can say I have walked across the swinging bridge.
Truly my daddy's child, I don't think I would make it on the bridge on a windy day, but this was pretty tame -- and wonderfully cool at that elevation. We climbed around on some of the rocks, took in the views, and just enjoyed being there on a nearly perfect day.
This was one of those great relaxing vacations where we did things at our own pace and sometimes it wasn't much.
We went for walks.
We watched the ducks on the pond. The swans at Chetola were raising babies -- (learned that baby swans are called cygnets. I am sure I will continue to call them baby swans.)
Relaxing for everyone except Duncan maybe. He did a lot of driving.
In the evenings, we laughed through episode after episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Sitting on the couch with your mother and laughing at a Priest tell almost dirty jokes is satisfying on so many different levels!
Back in the day, I thought I was thinking ahead when I made the rule: "Never set out to go anywhere without a corkscrew." My travel emergency kit consisted of jumper cables, a tampon, and always, a corkscrew.
Today, in preparation for holiday weekend travel, I knew I needed to clean out the trunk. After 5 years married to a disaster preparedness guy, here's some of what I found in my trunk: -- all of which I am told we "need to have."
4 bottles of water
suntan lotion and bug spray
duct tape
a bath towel and a wash cloth
a small fleece blanket
leather work gloves
3 umbrellas
2 flashlights -- both with working batteries
a sleeve of quarters
5 bungie cords
an insulated cold storage bag
a first aid kit where the band aids are at least 5 years old
an assortment of wrenches and screwdrivers
a city map and a phone book
a pair of crocs (for emergency gardening?)
a raincoat
and a corkscrew
Space for suitcases and beach chairs is shrinking.
Duncan and I skipped church today and instead went out as tourists in our own town. Our neighbor Harry has started doing Charleston tours and we went on his Harbor Tour today.
We've decided next time we go to a costume party, we can recreate this look and just add a pair of binoculars around Duncan's neck and some sightseeing maps spilling out of my bag and we'd be great Tourists!
We went out on the General Beauregard
Harry covered Charleston history from the 1500s to the establishment of the Navy base just before WWII
We got some pictures of the Ravenel Bridge from angles we don't usually see.
The bridge, the marina and The Yorktown. Downtown is to the left, Mount Pleasant to the right.
